Remembering what went right in 2012
Misery loves company, but it loves reporters even more. When people want to whinge, they often decide to broadcast their complaint by telling a reporter. We don’t mind – exposing injustice, system failures and general incompetence is one of our key roles. If it were not for complaints from the public, we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs because – funnily enough – organisations don’t tend to trumpet their failures.
Reporters’ roles as sponges of misery can mean that the news seems awfully dire sometimes, even in our comparatively blessed corner of the world. Part of the problem is that dysfunction is out of the ordinary, and so becomes ‘‘news’’. When things go the way they are meant to, we don’t normally notice. Have you ever seen a story headlined ‘‘Council picks up all rubbish on time and without incident’’?
The other reason is that one-off cockups are usually easy to explain, but progress is often incremental and harder to define.
Here at Motropolis, we are glass-halffull types. But even with that sunny disposition, we don’t always take adequate notice of things getting better. The universe may be expanding and entropy, as the second law of thermodynamics tells us, may never decrease, but amongst the general chaos, determined people keep plugging along, getting things done and making our communities better.
Before we get too deep in 2013 to care about the wrung-out tea towel of the previous year, here are a few things that got better in Motropolis last year. Public art Every time a new piece of public art is unveiled in Nelson, the protests begin. Suddenly, everyone is an art critic, although few display the wit of the letter writer to the Mail who took a close-up photo of his paint-spattered trousers to display his modern art ability.
So it was gratifying to hear nothing but praise when Motueka got a $20,000 sculpture in July.
Kaka Beak, a magnificent pair of seats by Bruce Mitchell that look like a kaka’s beak, was installed on the corner of High and Wallace Sts. If you like the simplicity of the name, you’ll love the classic form and utility of the piece.
Better yet, it was ‘‘stolen’’ from Richmond – the sculpture was commissioned by the Tasman District Council for outside the Richmond library, but was moved after Bruce’s family asked for him to be honoured by having it sited in Motueka, where it faces his Takaka Hill home. Come and sit in the beak when you next find yourself in High St, and enjoy the smooth, cool Takaka marble against your legs. Road building The state of the roads is a favourite topic among complainers, with either traffic, signs or potholes topping the list. Among the villains, the NZ Transport Agency gets spanked the hardest, since it lets us blame faceless Wellington bureaucrats who invariably are said to ‘‘not get it’’, ignore the advice of locals, and care only about Auckland – a perfect storm of small-town frustration.
When devastating slips wiped out the road to Totaranui at the end of 2011, initial rumours had the price of repairs at $20 million, and many feared the road would not get fixed at all.
But once engineers were able to walk the length of the road early last January, the estimate came down to $1.2m – and when the road was reopened in a year, the bill was just $700,000. Who paid? The NZTA, since the road, crucial to tourism, has ‘‘special purpose’’ designation.
Contractors spent more than 4000 hours and moved nearly 100,000 cubic metres of soil to get the road to a safe standard, and their work is being appreciated by campers this summer. Abel Tasman National Park In February, tourism operators welcomed the news that a private family trust (an Auckland family, no less) was to invest several million dollars in a 30-year project to restore the native ecology of Abel Tasman National Park.
Project Janszoon aims to enhance native forest and birdlife over almost 80 per cent of the park by 2042, the 100th anniversary of the park’s founding and the 400th anniversary of Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman finding New Zealand.
Project Janszoon’s first act in the park was to fund 30 more predator traps on Adele Island, and it laid 700 traps across 4500 hectares before Christmas.
Project director Devon McLean estimated that the project’s total cost over 30 years would be ‘‘north of $25 million’’. The total size of the project will depend on how far the trust wants to go with revegetation once predators are under control. Contact sport Depending on who you talk to, the fastest-growing sports in our region are either football, waka ama or paddleboarding.
But the most colourful new sport has to be roller derby – and it is not just the awesome costumes. The bruises generated by this fast and furious contact sport are artworks in themselves.
The Sirens of Smash, based in Motueka and Nelson, held their first public bout in May, when 2000 people packed the Trafalgar Centre for a double header against teams from Christchurch and Dunedin. The Sirens lost both bouts but came away buzzing about their first outing on the big stage – as did the large crowd. Recreation When the last section of Motueka’s Inlet Walkway was opened in November, it marked the completion of an ambitious five-year project to transform an abandoned sawdust dump into an attractive walkway around the Moutere estuary.
Spearheaded by Keep Motueka Beautiful and its project manager, Bob Cooke, the walkway has been a smashing success with walkers, cyclists and dog owners.
The $40,000 boardwalk between the eastern end of Wharf Rd and York Park was the missing link, and now that it is open, people can stroll the full 5km of the walkway without setting foot on the road.
Here’s a New Year toast to everybody who helped with these projects. Your vision and energy has made life better for all of us. Now we can all get back to the important work of complaining.